When I throw a punch, sometimes my wrist doesn't stay straight and I run the risk of spraining it. What kind of exercises can I do to strengthen my wrists so that my wrist isn't going to bend when I punch?

10 Answers
10

When I throw a punch, SOMETIMES MY WRIST DOESN'T STAY STRAIGHT and I run the risk of spraining it.

If I could highlight, underline, and make it flash, I would. Your issue here is not simply wrist strength (which, by the way, is not going to be corrected by simple strength training alone), but rather your form. Let me do my bold and caps thing again here to drive this point home:

IF YOUR WRIST IS OUT OF ALIGNMENT, YOU RUN THE RISK OF SPRAINING YOUR WRIST

Shocking, I know, but there's a key here: If your wrist is out of alignment. If it's not, your strike will be true, the impact will be absorbed down the long bones of the arm.

I really can't stress this enough: you must work on your form before you can rely on your punch. So, let's break down a punch (not necessarily your punch; I don't have any idea what you're studying, so I'll describe one method:

Step up to the target and slowly punch. Right now you're practicing just maintaining that alignment. Pick up a little momentum without putting your body into the punch yet.

Now, relax every muscle, just taking on a very relaxed posture. Curl your fist as before and make a slow loping punch at your target. Punch however feels natural, but maintain that tension in your wrist only. Maintaining that alignment is critical to throwing a decent punch.

Practice, practice, practice. Build up speed slowly, and start adding more body rotation into the strike. Be patient; this won't happen over night, but this is the truest way to build the right sort of strength for striking.

Punching with good form is its own workout. Your body naturally adapts to the lifestyle you set it to: If you work in a job sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day, your body adapts to that; if you chop wood every day for 2 hours, your body adapts to that. Punch to build the strength you need in the right muscles rather than performing exercises that target general groupings at the risk of not developing essential muscles.

-1 Form is always going to break down once he hits anything but air; strength is necessary to maintain good form in anything but kata-based arts.
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Dave LiepmannJun 18 '12 at 20:07

@DaveLiepmann Your comment is invalid: Striking against something is implicit in both the question and answer.
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stslavikJun 18 '12 at 21:14

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I'll vouch for this. My girlfriend, who does Krav, told me her wrist hurts whenever she tosses a hook punch. First punch I could see her from for the punch was off. Couple of quick tips and no more pain when tossing a hook.
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Wayne In YakJun 18 '12 at 22:20

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@DaveLiepmann Punching a bag with proper form is creating resistive tension in the muscles of the forearm that brace the wrist. The strength of your wrist is not static; it adapts to the stresses under which it's placed. Two quotes for you: Practice doesn't make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect. And If you want to be better at X, do X
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stslavikJun 27 '12 at 15:45

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@stslavik While I still disagree with your assertion that doing X is always the best training for doing X (see Practical Programming for a thorough refutation), and I think that strength is still an area of concern, I see your point that you are advocating hitting a target. I can't undo my downvote without an edit. Maybe emphasizing the "hit an object with force" (as opposed to "punch the air or punch a target gently") part of your answer would be a good edit that would allow me to undownvote.
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Dave LiepmannJun 27 '12 at 16:27

The knuckle pushups have the following benefits: strengthens the fist, strengthens the forearm muscles. But they also have some drawbacks: rough on your knuckles, overdoing it can induce joint pain.

Fingertip pushups also strengthen the forearm muscles, and help with knife-hand techniques. They are hard to do, but well worth your time.

Kettlebell presses are my new favorite. The uneven loading of the kettlebell strengthens your grip, and the movement of the kettlebell press also strengthens your rotator cuff muscles (the smaller muscles in your shoulders).

If you don't have access to a kettlebell, you may want to try alternating pushup styles:

a set of 10 fingertip pushups

a set of 10 knuckle pushups

a set of 10 standard pushups

If you have access to a heavy bag, that will give you the most direct work to get used to punching. However, I recommend on not taping up or putting gloves on. As a martial artist you need to toughen your hands to be able to hit properly. Sure, the rough material on the bag doesn't feel good--but it's a part of toughening the skin as well as the joints involved in the punch. Concentrate on technique and form. Use your hips. Don't try to be fancy. If you need to buy a heavy bag, I recommend a good 50lb bag. Any heavier than that is unnecessary, and potentially will wear out your joints quicker.

Strength and Form, Not Wrist-Specific Strength

Your best bet is improving your overall strength, not your wrist strength specifically. This, along with practicing good form with your punch against resistance, will keep you from bending your wrist. As Mark Rippetoe points out, it is more productive to get you strong, rather than get your wrist strong:

Strength is the most general adaptation. It is acquired most effectively through exercises that produce the most force against external resistance, and as such is always best trained with five or six basic exercises. The same exercises that are correct for weak football players and lifters are correct for weak volleyball and baseball players, because the best way to get strong will always be the same. Strength is NOT specific, and cannot effectively be acquired through exercises that mimic sports-specific movements, because these movements lack the potential to produce as much force as general barbell exercises, and therefore lack the capacity to make weak athletes as strong as barbell training.

Focusing on wrist strength alone will lead you to do physical therapy or bodybuilding-style isolation workouts. You'll get just as much wrist strength by doing whole-body strengthening exercises, with the added benefit of being stronger all over. Wrist rollers, wrist curls, and other hyper-specific work is best left to the injured, or those who are strong but have a specific deficiency.

That doesn't mean you can't get yourself stronger alongside some punching-specific work. How?

How

Hit things. Bag work, as suggested by many others, is a great suggestion. Keep it light and short as you start, and gradually ramp up the intensity over several weeks. Focus on maintaining good form with a straight wrist. Historical implements like the Okinawan makiwara or the Chinese wall-sandbag are useful too, though they omit the (enormously helpful) element of simultaneously training your footwork. Hitting something reinforces proper mechanics while at the same time making denser bones and stronger soft tissues.

Lift. If you want stronger wrists, I imagine that push-ups, pull-ups, and presses should be central in your lifting program. Normal push-ups are okay at first, but clapping or knuckle push-ups are superior and should be switched to as soon as possible. Pull-ups, particularly on a thick bar, rope, or towel will strengthen your forearms (as well as most of the rest of you) and thereby help you maintain wrist position as you punch. Adding weight will be another great help, so overhead presses, performed with lots of weight for low reps, will train your ability to keep the wrist straight under heavy loads. Those will work with kettlebells, dumbbells, or barbells (in decreasing order of my opinion of each tool's wrist-strength specificity).

simple dumbell exercises are great for strengthening wrists. i did a lot of these when i was having trouble with wrist pain and it helped a lot.

there are 3 movements you will want to do.

palm down curling your wrist up and down.
palm up curling your wrist up and down.
palm down or up, tipping your wrist side to side.

start with a fairly light weight so your wrists can get used to the movements, and increase the weights as you go.

i see a lot of people posting about doing pushups to strengthen wrists, and while push ups are great for general strength and whatnot, if you have weak or injured wrists, there are exercises you should be doing before attempting knuckle or finger tip pushups.

Just want to throw some Hojo-Undo in the mix.
Specifically the Chi-Ishi and Ishi Sashi.
After a few weeks of using the Chi-Ishi my wrists and grip strength were noticeably improving, and the tools are really simple to make.

Of all the answers I like Patricia's best. There is little musculature in the wrist proper. The muscles that flex the wrist or hold it stable are in the forearm.
Hand-curling motions, hand extension motions....The old classic "wrist roller"....All these strengthen the flexor and extensor musculature in

You could try punching walls a bit. Slowly punch the value and punch in such a way that you feel only your knuckles against the wall. Slowly increase the power behind your punch. It helps a lot. I have been doing that for some time now.